Eye Tracking Techniques for a Mobile-First World

Eye tracking techniques have gained importance as brands try to differentiate with user experience as features get commoditized as in the physical world. Data from person’s eye gaze helps brands to enhance the usability and ultimately improve the user experience.

Today eye tracking techniques are being used for user experience and interaction, market research, infant and child research and physiology and neuroscience. The applications of eye tracking studies are endless with newer fields of use getting added every day.

Eye Tracking Techniques: Enhance usability

Elements of your website are being noticed by the users and which are ignored altogether

Elements that distract the users from the parts that are actually important

For a publisher is the content being read or being scanned

Time the user spends engaging with elements like menu, navigation, advertisement) in an interface

Understand the sequence of perceived elements in an interface from user experience standpoint

Do users find the information they want or are they depend on search extensively

Gaze plot Study

Gaze Plot study inspects the paths and order between elements inside an interface. The visualisation rendered shows a series of short stops termed as fixations and fast movements of an eye are referred as saccades.

Brands can understand the sequence of movements during a gaze fixation which enables them to understand whether the arrangement of elements in the interface has to be changed basis the importance termed by the brand. Gaze Plot study is also commonly referred scan path report.

Heat Map Study

The heat map is the most commonly used eye tracking technique. Heat map displays the most attractive elements of an interface in the form of hot & cold spots. Brands track heat map study over a given period of time to do A/B split testing with multiple or more designs of the interface to decide on the final design.

Hot spots in the heat map hold the attention of consumers and the dark portion of the interface is usually unnoticed by the user.

Bee Swarm Study

Bee Swarm study displays gaze fixation of a user in the form of points that attract the most attention. Bee Swarm study are termed very effective in the testing of video clips.

Cluster Study

Cluster studies are made up of polygons which display the areas with the highest concentration of gaze points. Clusters displayed may also be transformed into areas of interest.

Opacity Map Study
Opacity Map can be also termed as a negative image of a heat map. Opacity Map study tones down information that is not attractive and visually displays what your viewers may perceive during the first few seconds of visual inspection. Areas that don’t get users attention are shaded and non-shaded parts catch the users’ attention. Opacity Map study shows the parts of the interface with the highest/longest fixations and shades the rest of the interface.

Areas of Interest Study

Areas of Interest report study lets you define areas inside an interface that draw the maximum attention. A brand can use the study to identify which areas are being perceived and which are being ignored. Areas of Interest study also known as Regions of Interest Study.

Brands can also use the study to compare results between different versions of a layout.

How to get started with Eye Tracking?

Online solutions available to conduct eye tracking include CrazyEgg, Feng-GUI, iMotions, CoolTool and more. Brands can also use eye tracking devices which help to conduct eye tracking test the most popular device available in the market is Tobii Pro which claims to be the market leader in eye tracking solutions.